The Tissue Culture Shared Resource (TCSR) is an integral part of the Lombardi Cancer Center (LCC) research activities. The role of the Resource is to assist investigators with all of the tissue culture reared aspects of their work and to maintain the LCC cell line repository. To this end the Resource provides consultation, facilities and services to a diverse group of investigators involved in cancer research. Specifically, the shared resource: 1) Maintains an expanding collection of over 279 individual cell lines and provides frozen vials or live cultures of these lines to investigators. 2) Equips, monitors, stocks and services four separate shared tissue culture labs for the use of investigators who do not have the ability to perform tissue culture in their labs or who need additional tissue culture space. 3) Prepares, tests and supplies to investigators tissue culture reagents of the highest quality, that have been specifically tested for suitability in the relevant systems, as inexpensively as possible. 4) Provides mycoplasma testing and genetic fingerprinting of cells. 5) Provides expert consultation regarding the use of tissue culture techniques in cancer research and provides training to investigators at all levels in the use of this technology. 6) Provides a safe, secure cryo-storage facilty for investigators to keep frozen stocks of their cancer cell lines. 7) Provides a B-cell transformation service to facilitate cancer genetics studies. There has been a steady growth in the number of users and services offered by the LCC TCSR since its inception in 1989. While the vast majority (99.56%) of the Resource users remains to be LCC members, the percent of users with peer reviewed funding has steadily increased reaching 94% in 2001.